Knots In The Thread
by dekinai-yo
Summary: Imbalance will out.    The battle is not over, and Ichigo is not the type of person to let life, and the fates of everyone he loves, slip by
1. Chapter 1

Potential spoilers up to 424

Rating: PG (for now- potential future violence/angst may up it to PG-13)

Disclaimer: these characters do not belong to me. just borrowing-

This is something I've been mulling over for a long time - if I don't flesh it out, I won't be able to sleep any more. I hope someone out there gets something out of this as well as me. This is a WIP, unknown number of chapters coming. May also end up in part as a doujinshi. And seriously, formatting on ffnet is difficult - if this looks terrible to you, you can also read this story on livejournal in a slightly less annoying format. Thanks for reading.

* * *

**落ち葉の上で雪が沈降し始まった見ると****,****きっと、見えざる赤霊絡が心お包んで引いた**

ochiba no ue de yuki ga chikou shihajimatta miru to, kitto miezaru akareiraku ga kokoro o tsutsunde hiita

as I watched snow begin to settle on the fallen leaves, it was surely a red ribbon that, unseen, wrapped around my heart and pulled

* * *

There is no Kurosaki family grave in Seireitei.

The Four Houses keep a large swath of land along the southern ridge of Kuukoku, the Empty Valley, and though their noble ancestors have been laid to rest there for thousands of years, it is a wide open space. Scattered along the hillside, the small groups of stone markers sit a fair and respectable distance from each other, and in what was always my favorite spot, not far from Hisana Nee-sama, the sunlight filters softly through a whispering canopy of translucent scarlet maples. During the day, uguisu hidden in the woods hem and haw over the sound of rainwater gurgling in the gutters, and at dusk the higurashi cicadas' lament fades into a nighttime chorus of a million happy little frogs. There is an ironically vibrant, living feeling about the place.

I do not remember it, but have been told that the day after, four days ago now, I think, Nii-sama left Renji with a short stack of paperwork to file under Donation and Transfer of Land Title or something like that, and took me there. He carried me all the way to that red grove by the stairs on the eastern edge of the Kuchiki plot, set me down, walked with me for a few minutes, and asked me to decide. They drove a stake into the ground where I fell and began to dig.

* * *

"Manager! Hey, Manager - he's coming! You want me to lock the door?"

The snap of a fan in the next room stayed Jinta's hand on the amado, and he furrowed his eyebrows through the strange pause. Urahara appeared, bareheaded, from behind the shoji at the rear of the shop, and looked silently past Jinta to the street. Tapping his fan twice to his chin, he sighed.

"I suppose there's not much point in putting it off, is there?"

Stepping down into his geta, Urahara walked up to the door and patted a frowning Jinta on the back, never taking his unfocused gaze off the road.

"It can't be helped. Go see if Tessai needs help in the kitchen, Jinta-kun."

A few seconds later, the sound of slow but steady footfalls rose above the background hum of the city, turning the corner and stopping at the back of the lot where Urahara sat, uncharacteristically waiting alone in the genkan. He looked up with a smile that did not reach above the fringe of his straw-colored hair, and tried to straighten his shoulders.

"Kurosaki-san, as always, your timing is impeccable,"he said in an uneven attempt at his best 'shopkeeper's voice'. More than that, he was trying not to notice how different, how fragile this one (with his fists jammed into his pockets so hard there had to be crescent-shaped wounds on his palms) now felt. Urahara hadn't bothered to keep count of the number of times he and Yoruichi, never mind Inoue-san, had mended the boy's body, broken, flayed and practically bled out, and carried him to safety where he could heal enough to fight again. And yet. And yet he'd never felt more, well, mortal than he did at this moment, standing in front of the shouten in a whole, relatively unperforated 16 year old human body. Kurosaki's glare, however, was anything but fragile.

"You know why I'm here.", he said in a flat, almost dead voice, as something not-quite-dead-yet flickered in his eyes. Urahara stood and his eyes shifted, dimming, glancing inward for a moment. He turned to remove his shoes and step back into the building.

"Yes, well," he conceded, turning back to look over his shoulder, "it always ends up being ...difficult, when we get what we wished for, doesn't it? Naturally, I've been working on a backup plan that involves you, though really, none of this was ever intended to be your burden. We sowed the seeds of this disaster years before your mother was even born." Urahara stepped aside to let him into the sitting room first. " At any rate, I must clean up my own mess, and once again, humbly request that you allow me to throw you to the wolves. Let me get you some tea."

* * *

Ichigo had to admit that there was something soothing about sitting again on Urahara's tatami with a cup in his hand, watching Tessai fold his huge frame to kneel in such a deliberately subdued manner just to place a tiny bowl of seven umeboshi on the table between them. He briefly wondered if it just came naturally to a master of kidou, the control of energy so complete it actually translated into every move he made. The thought brought a rush of petulant jealousy that he quickly squashed by trying to clear his thoughts. Ichigo had been unsure whether his feelings of frustrated desperation would make this meeting difficult, but being invited inside and told there was actually a way out- it felt... good. It meant that he wasn't helpless, weak, - dying slowly, like he sometimes thought in his worst moments, when self pity crept in. It really felt like he could breathe deeply again for the first time since he'd learned the price he would have to pay for a way to overpower Aizen. He couldn't survive another day of 'normal' life, and honestly didn't care that Urahara's gaze kept sinking down to the floor in the back corner, like he was about to break the news that someone's dear pet had been hit by a car. Clearly the possibilities were not endless, but he wasn't here looking for an easy, safe way back. Anything outside of plain old death would do, and he knew it wouldn't take much convincing to get Urahara to help him with the means to his end. Anticipation turning a little towards impatience, he leaned forward to start the conversation by way of fixing his eyes on the other man and popping an umeboshi into his mouth. The salt was enough to kill a small child, but he kept his game face on. He wasn't weak. Urahara swirled the dregs in his cup, and inhaled audibly.

"Let me say this and get it out of the way - I can't just bring your reiatsu back. I would have done it already. Like we said before, your reiatsu is practically gone, supposedly never to return in this lifetime. This is how it would be expected to go, with any other person. But, of course, you have never met expectations, so there's no reason to believe that your power could not return, even soon, relatively speaking. We can't know for sure. You want a way to force it to happen, I know, but I can't help you with that - not until you regain enough reiatsu to survive training, at least. If that were the only worry, we would simply need to be patient. Unfortunately, there is a larger issue at hand."

Ichigo knew he would be told that his reiatsu could not be forced to return whenever he felt like it, since technically it was not even supposed to be possible. He focused on Urahara's positive tone, and didn't allow himself to be disappointed. He knew that his loss by itself was not their greatest problem, and the shallow pool of fear, lying cold in his gut, stirred with an acrid lurch at Urahara's next words.

"Aizen is, inevitably, going to break free. It might not happen for years, decades - but it could also happen at any moment, and we can not afford to be unprepared. He's not going to waste any time messing around with the Espada – he'll have the element of surprise and will take the opportunity to forge the Ōken before we can set up a defense. Physical transformation and egomaniacal crowing aside, he will have what he needs to make the Key. He won't stand around rubbing it in our faces – he's going to move quickly."

Urahara paused, as much to collect his thoughts as to see what Kurosaki had to say. He knew the boy must have been wearing down in the months since he gave up almost everything to defeat Aizen - they'd kept an eye on him despite his complete lack of reiatsu, and so felt the restless discontent that rolled off of him in waves, increasing over time to the point where there were moments that the air he'd passed through tasted almost -hollow- like, with that faint but distinct sour burning behind the tonsils. Guilt came as naturally as breathing to Urahara, so that when it washed through him, he didn't think to question whether Kurosaki would have called it unwarranted. Then again, he knew the boy had a similar predisposition - he was in good company. Kurosaki sat, waiting. No complaints yet, it seemed.

"When Aizen escapes, he's going to come after you, I'm sure you've realized. Especially if you don't seem to pose any threat to him after what you lost in the last battle, I'm positive he'll spare the time to kill you before making the Ōken. The thing is, this could actually work in our favor. If you want another chance to protect the people you care about, there is still something you can do, even if you haven't regained enough power to become shinigami again. I'll have to arrange a meeting with Hachigen - he's been holding something for me that we will have to put into commission. It was a form of insurance, really- but now half its power depends on keeping it secret. I've had to make sure I kept it hidden completely, much more so than the Hougyoku. - someone like Aizen, who has eyes only for great power, would never notice a quiet, dark object like this. Like the Hougyoku, it is much more than just a catalyst, but where one creates an ever greater capacity for growth, this object is a concentrated void of energy, formed specifically to devour, unmake, cancel out the Hougyoku if it ever became destructively imbalanced. The problem is, this object, Soukyuutai, needs to come into direct contact with Aizen himself, and he is sure to keep everyone at a distance – everyone except you.


	2. Chapter 2

Urahara watched the boy taking in what he had just heard, and waited to see how he would react. He knew what was coming, he just didn't know how it would be delivered. The stretch of silence felt thick; he knew that Kurosaki had been mired in suffocating defeat and was trying to climb up and out just enough to come to terms with this new information, come too late. Always just a little too late. He was a little surprised with the eyes that met his - almost empty, but not quite.

"Just one question - why did you never mention this before? You could have prevented a lot of trouble..." Ichigo frowned, trying not to make assumptions about what had or had not been in Urahara's power to do. He had already spent the past 6 months trying not to drown in regret, and did not want to dwell on what might have been before he even really understood what the other man was talking about.

Urahara's shoulders hunched slightly – Ichigo was surprised to see the man's emotions veiled so thinly – for such a normally deadpan, mysterious person, Urahara was doing a bad job of it. Apparently the situation had really worn on him.

"It's no secret that the 'work' of the 12th, revolving around the manipulation of Reishi, tends to produce very unpredictable results. These things often have minds, wills of their own. Reishi is, fundamentally, life itself. I never intended to try to gain complete control over it, and would have been a blasphemous fool to think I could. We were just kids playing in the sand that grew up to become glassblowers. Despite the lengths we went to in order to retain a semblance of control, things in that line of work do tend to evolve in ways we can, at best, predict with a sizable margin of error. The Soukyuutai was developed alongside the Hougyoku out of necessity of many kinds, but all along it remained dormant, seemingly complete, but unresponsive. Before I decided to seal and hide away the Hougyoku, I tried everything that could safely be done in the short term to awaken the Soukyuutai, and nothing worked. I had been hoping to keep working with them in tandem, for the sake of balance if nothing else. The silence of the Soukyuutai was, unfortunately, a major factor in my decision to hide the Hougyoku the way that I did. The two objects were connected at the most fundamental levels, so I knew that physical separation would not be a problem. It was also better not to draw attention to the Soukyuutai, to make it a more powerful counterbalance if the Hougyoku fell into the wrong hands. There wasn't much choice without waiting to see what the passing of time, and 'experience' of the Hougyoku would do. All that time, the Soukyuutai slept – through Rukia's ordeal on Soukyoku Hill, and through its abuse in Hueco Mundo. When you unleashed your Mugetsu on Aizen, I don't know what it was – I don't know whether the force of that final blow caused it directly, or whether Aizen's near-death state had something to do with it – but the Soukyuutai came to life."  
Kurosaki's eyes went a little out of focus, but he didn't respond to this grand revelation. Urahara opened his mouth to continue when the boy's brain seemed to suddenly kick back into gear.

"So, even if I have no reiatsu at all, ever, I can carry this thing around with me indefinitely, and it will work if Aizen attacks me?"

"Uhnn. In you, to be more exact."

"What if he doesn't escape while I'm still alive? "

Urahara pursed his lips.

"Well then I'll just have to sneak into the morgue and retrieve it so I can give it to you as a 'Welcome To The Rukongai' present, won't I?"

Ichigo scowled slightly, aware that Urahara wasn't just making a tasteless joke.

"Okay, but what if Aizen doesn't go after me at all? Are you really sure that he will? "

"You're right, I am running on that assumption – but I really am positive that he will. If nothing else, he's going to need a moment to make the Ōken, and I imagine, after what you did to him, he'll be even more motivated to hurt or kill you in the process if it's possible. " Urahara raised and tipped his hand, as if to say 'and here is something obvious'. "That said, if by chance he proves me wrong, I'm sure you won't argue if we hurry you along to confront him yourself. "

"And he won't notice this ...thing?" Ichigo trailed off, waving towards his own chest.

"By its nature, the Soukyuutai continuously pulls in low levels of reiatsu from around itself, effectively rendering it invisible. Its presence would not be detectable until it was too late. The only way he could know to avoid it would be if someone warned him. Unless one of the two of us slips up, this is impossible."

"What? Not even Yoruichi-san knows about it?"

"I kept it a secret from those closest to me for their own safety. Reasonable course of action, wasn't it?"

Ichigo poured another cup of tea, now cold, and remembered Tessai, who must be just down the hall. "But what about these guys? Haven't they been within earshot this whole time?"

Urahara gestured lazily towards the corners. "Low level kidou. It's not a problem."

"Right. So the two objects are what, supposed to be communicating, reacting to each other? What's happening to the Hougyoku where Aizen is right now? His power is supposed to be sealed, right? Can you tell by what the Soukyuutai is doing?"

"The Soukyuutai should not show any outward signs of change, now that it is awake. It sits quiet and still whether it's absorbing a trickle of stray reiatsu, or a torrent from the likes of a captain-class shinigami. This is why it should be easy enough to conceal in plain sight, assuming it's not actively being looked for. It is really only visible indirectly, through the effect it has on things around it. It will behave as a parasite once inside you, and with any luck, you will someday see its effects, in that it will have been pulling foreign reiatsu through you, and pulling at your own soul like a weak magnet for long enough that it may actually restart your own reiatsu flowing again. It would be absorbing any reiatsu that you did emit, however, so don't expect your friends to feel anything coming from you. In the same vein, I'm afraid that Aizen's imprisonment and consequent suffering may be triggering a faster growth rate in the Hougyoku – his prison predates the Hougyoku by quite a bit and isn't likely to keep it down completely. There is no way to measure it directly, but if this is happening, it may be coaxing the Soukyuutai into a higher base rate of reiatsu absorption. This effect would compound over time, which would potentially give Aizen the power to escape, but would also be a more effective jump start for your own reiatsu. If it can be resurrected at all, that is."

He looked up to see a face that clearly said 'I really want to understand all this but it's beginning to make my head hurt' and so Urahara reined himself in.

"You know what this all boils down to. You carry the Soukyuutai until Aizen escapes, and whenever that is, you make sure that when he attacks, he is able to reach you. In the meantime, the Soukyuutai's parasitic effects combined with regular proximity to the living world's most prominent high-reiatsu community are your best chances for reigniting your own reiatsu."

Ichigo absentmindedly turned his left hand in to rub a spot on his sternum, and Urahara wondered whether he was thinking of the future, or the past.

Ichigo knew Urahara was waiting for this question.

"When he does come into contact with the Soukyuutai, and it does its job, what will happen to me?"

"The Soukyuutai itself will not harm you when it devours the Hougyoku and Aizen along with it – extraneous injuries, however, are what they are. Direct contact with the Soukyuutai's limited range will be enough, but that means he will need to pierce you with either Zanpakutou, hand, or Key. Hopefully it will come down to one strike, one point of contact." Urahara's face contorted for a second; this path didn't sit well with him at all, but it was what they had. He stood and waited for the boy to meet his eyes. Kurosaki looked decidedly unafraid - a marked improvement from his disposition on the way in.  
"You won't be alone, you know that. I may be asking you to allow yourself to be used as bait, but we would never leave you hanging. Speaking of, it's almost time to eat. Do you want to stay?"

Ichigo stood. "No, but thanks. Should I wait for a message about meeting with Hacchi-san?"

"Yes - and it will come very soon. But don't worry about keeping the window open this time. I'll use another method."


	3. Chapter 3

Summary, rating, disclaimer in chapter 1. Thanks for reading – drop a note at the end!

* * *

Four days later, Ichigo stumbled out of an 'abandoned' warehouse with his hands shoved in his pockets to keep them away from his chest.

The Vaizard all have gigai of their own, so it wasn't entirely awkward returning to their building, at least in that he could see them. When Hacchi-san released the Soukyuutai from its barrier, he saw nothing in the space. He did, however, become mildly nauseous for a moment, and couldn't decide whether it was in his head or not. After a brief description of what they were looking at, ("completely black, so devoid of surface that your eyes strain to find something to focus on – but at the same time, looking like it must be shifting, or rotating with an arrhythmic spin") Urahara's hands appeared to gently press the invisible object through his ribcage, to bounce around inside for all he knew. And that was it. He felt exactly the same, outside of the nausea and a sense of anticipation that was quickly fading. Urahara reassured him that he would hear from them if anything happened, and suddenly everyone's eyes on him felt heavy; embarrassment flushed his face with heat and he turned to go after a terse bow and a mumbled goodbye to the room.

The autumn air cooled his face as he walked, but the self-conscious feeling remained. He would need to forget about the thing buried in his chest and continue this farce of a normal human life. Waiting for something to happen – waiting for his true vision to return - waiting for Aizen – would just be an even bigger waste of time. He turned a corner to cut through the park, and just after the bright colors of the changing leaves caught his attention, he realized a hand had made its way out of his pocket and up over his heart. An odd feeling crept up on him – not excitement, exactly, but a subtle twist of emotion at knowing there was once again a foreign source of power, of a kind, embedded somewhere between his lungs. His thoughts veered to the original before he could stop himself, and the memory of her _presence_ rushed through him with an exceptional clarity. Cursing himself for the unguarded moment, he pressed his fingertips into the ridges of bone underneath, digging in - but the violet eyes in his mind, so sad in a way he had never seen before, would not fade fast enough. He was glad it was too late in the day for the park to be crowded. Face tilted towards the sky kept the threat of tears at bay, and he silently promised everyone this would be it. No more self pity. With the Soukyuutai, he had a way to destroy Aizen, and maybe even to get his life back – he had no reason to be so overwhelmed with longing any more, did he? He didn't need his reiatsu back in this life to be able to protect them all one more time, didn't have to see them to know that they were still out there, that they still needed him somehow, that they would visit if they could...

'Che, just like a whining brat,' he muttered under his breath. Ichigo shook his head, forcing out this ridiculous train of thought – scowling at himself, he picked up his pace on the walk home, and refused to dwell on the possibility that he may die without ever encountering Aizen, regaining his reiatsu, or seeing Rukia again.

* * *

(1 year, 2 months later)

November nights bring with them the sighing adolescent breath of winter's deathly chill, and each harsh gust tears through every fragile thing, withering the last of the maple leaves and ripping them down to make playthings of them; crudely whipping the shide against the frame of the small ŌInari Shrine. This winter wind has none of the illusory purifying effect of snow. Stinging the face of the under-dressed boy who stood lost in thought at the front of the small alcove, the cold whispered promises of darkness against his throat with an alkaline caress. His vacant, hazel eyes reflected the vigilant gaze of the tiny kitsune like shallow water pooled over a bed of fallen oak leaves.

The manicured pine gracefully reaching over the cob wall by the shrine was rustling softly, green even in the dark, but Ichigo, especially this time of year, when the cold first came and erased light and life from the world, could not help but see death everywhere he looked. The knowledge that life came after only led once again to the inevitable conclusion, and so offered no comfort. There was no reiatsu humming underneath to soften the edges of the world. He heard a scabbard drag in every skittering leaf; a searching call in every far-off moan of wind that whistled low through the eaves of Karakura-cho in the middle of the night. The noisy crashing and banging of everyday human life still sometimes made his heart jump out of habit, though he'd long since managed to stop literally jumping up every time the trash truck came by. He felt empty, and the black hole nestled to the right of his heart sometimes brought nightmares of even deeper oblivion, but the void in him had become his last remaining purpose, and had become, in a sick twist of fate, his greatest hope.

He could not sleep at night; could not wake in the morning. He wandered aimlessly in the early hours to get away from his small empty room with its small empty closet where there was nothing to counter his poisoned thoughts. He wanted to believe that he was producing a small amount of reiatsu by now, and the Soukyuutai was simply draining it away, leaving him feeling horrid. But it had only been a little over a year, and though it felt like an eternity, with little progress in his life and no sign of the other world outside of his friends occasionally running off without him, a year was like a teardrop in the ocean. It had become a much more difficult path than he'd anticipated, this silent waiting. He wondered whether it would have helped to have been able to tell the others about Urahara's plan, but he didn't feel particularly burdened with the secret. He just felt wrong, all the way through. Urahara had called him over to check on him a couple of times since the previous autumn, and had no qualms about playing psychologist. Ichigo didn't protest; he was learning how to exist without pride, though it certainly could not be called living. He remembered how it felt to live. Funny how it had been, for him, with one foot standing in the world of the living and the other foot standing in the world of the dead, and more often than not in the middle of or on the way to a battle, or training for one at the very least.

Urahara had an obnoxious way of repeatedly bringing Seireitei and the other shinigami into the conversation, 'to make sure he didn't feel completely isolated from that part of his life' he said – it hurt to endure, but Urahara was right. It was worse when the others avoided talking about those things in front of him, though they thought they were sparing his feelings. One day, whether it was before or after he died, he would return to that world, and he did need to remember that. Urahara could be frustratingly vague, of course. Speaking of Soul Society only made Ichigo want to know more, hear more, and if Urahara wanted to bring it up, Ichigo would prefer he talked until his voice gave out. He never offered much real news, though, so Ichigo avoided him as often as he reasonably could.

Finding himself still standing in front of the shrine, he idly wondered how late it was, whether he was dangerously cold yet or not. It was actually difficult to tell, a lot of the time. He bowed quickly and walked off, feeling oddly unnerved. There was a path that cut through a vacant lot by the old street he'd been wandering on, and he stepped off the road onto the dirt, which was already half-frozen. Someone, neighbors maybe, maintained the land, so it was more like an untamed garden, normally very pleasant to walk through. The canopy of maples and chestnuts had been stripped by the cold sometime in the past week, however, and the gardens were swathed in a fresh layer of dead leaves. He put a hand to his chest again as he walked – it had really become a habit lately. It was so difficult to believe that he wouldn't feel any side effects from this thing he had inside him – especially if he was producing reiatsu and it was being consumed. Any time he found himself feeling anxious, drained, weak with an elevated heart rate, he would wonder whether he was doing it to himself or if it was -

The rattle of dead leaves being shifted stopped his thoughts in their tracks, and he froze, listening for any other sound as he slowly turned to look behind him. Moments passed, and his heart, pounding, thumped up through his throat into his head, almost all he could hear. There was no one there. It had been something, he was sure, not just wind, that had shifted those leaves. His imagination took off even as he realized there had to be mice still searching for food before the snow came, and he couldn't help feeling like he was being watched. It was a familiar trap – he'd fallen into it enough times it seemed there were grooves in the path that led him there each time. His eyes darted around, looking for any kind of movement, and he cursed his fool brain that hoped too much, and his fool mouth that insisted on breathing out a name he knew, _knew_ was falling on no one's ears but his own. Still, as always in this pathetic game, he waited. For something. Anything. The wind picked up, and after a minute Ichigo's heart rate slowed enough that he began to realize he was really, really cold. Sadness draped over him like a leaden blanket, again, but he was more angry with himself for going through the same pathetic routine so many times, unable to get a grip and move on. What he was supposed to move on to, he wasn't sure, but this was no good. The days were still getting shorter, and the nights darker and colder. He couldn't cave so soon. He still had a mission, even if it felt quite the opposite. He turned his back to the empty space where that sound had seemed to come from, and headed towards the streetlights.

It was a moonless night.


End file.
